Motilal Oswal marks 30 years of operating in the equity and wealth creation space with an effective new campaign that tries to make the brand synonymous with equity investments

The ad comes across as a fresh attempt at messaging in the financial services/products category.

Motilal Oswal marks 30 years of operating in the equity and wealth creation space with an effective new campaign that tries to make the brand synonymous with equity investments

The Ad

The film is a montage of people from various walks of life having mastered one particular skill in their working lives as a result of habitually doing it. It shows a cook at a beach-side shack, a clerk in office, a bartender and a paperboy, among others. It eventually brings out the idea that when you focus on one thing, you master it, just like the brand has mastered the space of equity investments.

Target Audience

Mass affluent investors in the 25-50 years age bracket across the top 10 Indian cities.

Business Objective

To create consideration for Motilal Oswal as an equity investment specialist.

The ad, with minimum amount of copy, uses a comical background track to provide slices of life of the working populace, to bring forth its point on expertise in one particular field.

Competitive Edge

The ad comes across as a fresh attempt at messaging in the financial services/products category. Where most other ads in the space have been seen going with the ‘what is best for the family’ route, the brand in question has chosen to put forth its expertise proposition.

Tone of Voice

Cheeky

Verdict

Motilal Oswal’s recent campaign wishes to celebrate 30 years of the brand’s experience in the equities and wealth creation categories. The Think Equity campaign seems to have rolled out with a single-minded focus of being there for the captive audience’s consideration. It is not a communication that pitches to you the benefits of equity investment; that thought is perhaps for another day when the focus needs to be on customer education and eventually acquisition. The brand, in the past, has had more tactical campaigns, especially the ones featuring The Man from Motilal Oswal, in which the objectives have been about educating the captive audiences about the company’s services/products. The TVC has been cleanly executed as well. Each vignette, be it of the chef slicing the watermelon into a small block in a matter of seconds or of the paperboy placing pamphlets in newspapers in a manner that almost seems mechanical, pulls the viewer in and keeps them curious to know more about the product being advertised. The minimal use of copy adds the extra kick needed to drive the point home.

A good number of ads in the financial products/services space in the past couple of years have adopted a certain style of messaging; these have mostly been about living, earning, investing for the family or about the consumer’s hopes and dreams that the financial institution helps fulfil — tearjerkers, if you will. Another brand in the BFSI space, IDFC Bank, had rolled out a campaign (spoofy in nature) last year that spoke about actually serving consumers rather than engaging in dramatic storytelling. Think Equity does something similar, but more organically in the sense that it does so without making a commentary on its peers and keeps the focus on what the brand has to offer.